Divine Pulse
by The Loud Guy
Summary: After uniting Fódlan and retiring to a quiet life, Byleth and Edelgard von Hresvelg spend years in happy solitude. However, the march of time continues, and the strain of two crests will exact its toll. Byleth is left reaching for a solution to a problem that may be insurmountable.


In the Brigid archipelago there was one island that was very sparsely populated; though rich enough with game and flora to support a small community, only two people made their home there. So it had been for the better part of a decade, when a small boat with supplies delivered the pair to what they would call their new home.

Those who lived on nearby islands would occasionally catch glimpses of the pair on the shore, sitting on a newly built dock, fishing for hours. Talking. Always talking. Talking from when the sun rose until it went down. Talking while the fish were biting. Talking while there were no fish at all. One of them liked to talk more than the other, and her partner liked to listen. They laughed a great deal.

Stories spread through the islands about that pair. Eventually, Queen Petra declared that the island was not to be disturbed save by emissaries from the royal family. After that, messengers would flit back and forth once a moon or so. Usually it was a tall man in black who came in the dead of night; sometimes it was Queen Petra's advisor, the singer from Adrestia, who would arrive in the morning and be greeted on the shore.

People were not foolish, of course. They understood what was happening as it happened, and after everything was done they understood that, too.

They remembered the ceding of land rights back to Brigid, and how fiercely the queen had fought for those rights. But, also, they remembered the Adrestian Emperor who had given back those rights, who had signed a peace treaty with Dagda, who had made reparations for the harm suffered by the islanders. They remembered that the emperor, once her work was complete, had abdicated the throne in favor of a kinder, gentler successor. That had been a wise thing; a nation could not but buckle under the weight of the blood staining the old emperor's hands.

Of course it was not the former emperor who came to the island, white hair flowing behind her. It was not her partner who carried their belongings onto the shore, eyes sharp and expression reserved. The island was not filled by their shared history. The air around them was not that breathed by conquerors, colored and scented by the blood they had bathed in to birth a new world. This was not a sanctuary. This was not a place where those who had challenged the gods could simply be people, simply live for years without the world seeking them out.

Of course not.

* * *

Byleth set one last fish in the basket. A good haul for an afternoon; with some salt and a bit of smoke, the catch would last them for days. It was a good thing to earn one's dinner, but it was a better thing when one didn't have to. They smiled, thinking of that. El would like that joke.

The sun was not quite setting, though the sky's color was beginning to shift as they squared away their bait and tackle. They stood on the edge of the pier, looking out at the water, listening. It was so quiet, here, even with all the furious, insistent life that filled every square meter of the island. Maybe it was only people who truly made _noise_, they thought, setting their tackle under one arm and taking their basket in the other.

The walk back to the tiny house was brief. The island wasn't small, but they'd built their home near the edge of the woods. El loved the sound of the sea at night; over time, Byleth found it helped them sleep, too. That was enough. They were no longer so concerned about security—though, in truth, it had mostly been El's change of heart. Stepping down from the imperial seat, giving up the throne and going away, was supposed to have been an instant change for the two of them. Byleth had managed it with alarming alacrity, as they'd managed every change in their life, easily slipping into new routines and new mindsets. Edelgard von Hresvelg had not been so quick. For years she had been like a fist that wouldn't unclench, starting at every noise, always ready to protect what was hers.

Byleth had never been sure how to help her, though she'd assured them they'd done everything that _could_ be done.

They set their tackle in the tool shed, dragging the raised bench into the yard. It was the best surface they owned for cleaning fish. They retrieved two good knives.

"El!" They listened for a moment. Silence from the little house. When she did not answer, "El, I'm back with the fish. Will you help me clean them?"

More silence. More.

"El?"

Aside from Edelgard, only Jeralt had ever known this about Byleth: they felt as fiercely, as insistently, as any other person. Moreso. Over time, El had begun to wonder if their limited expression was rooted in the enormity of that feeling, their body unable to measure up to their heart. Their rising panic was a beast the size of a nation, and it took every ounce of their willpower to set the two knives down on the bench. To turn, slowly, away from the basket of fish. To walk—not to run, not to _fly_ by the strength of their body, but to _walk_—to the door of their house. To open the door. To step inside. To shut it calmly.

"El?"

She was seated on the high-back seat they had built together, just wide enough for the two of them, slumped in one corner.

She had never aged a day. Like those who had been infused with the blood of the children of the goddess in the imperial founding, like Lysithea, like Jeralt, the vitality of Sothis had kept time away from her. Not a wrinkle around her eyes; not a line connecting her nose to her mouth; nothing.

But she bore two crests. And every day, from the day her blood had been reconstructed up to now, that had meant a different strain on her.

She opened her eyes and smiled, the same smile she always gave when she saw them, the same smile that still set their heart to hammering.

"Will you come sit by me?" Her voice was very soft, as if she had to struggle to get the words out. "I've been lonely. It was hard, waiting for you."

They crossed the room. They willed their hands still as they sat next to her, pulling her over to lean on their shoulder. She settled into this comfortable, familiar pose, sighing in her satisfaction. She rested one hand on their opposite shoulder, nuzzling against their neck with her forehead. After a moment she lifted her head and locked eyes with them, arresting them with the clarity and intensity of her gaze.

"You're trembling," she said.

"Yes," they responded. Or tried to. The word didn't come out. It was more of a gasp, followed by a sharp inhalation, almost a hiccup. They swallowed. "I'm not ready."

"You are," she said.

"I'm not," they insisted.

They could never be ready. This wasn't some... some wasting condition, where Edelgard weakened prettily over the course of many years, leading to a logical endpoint. She'd never lost her strength—the fullness of which Byleth knew, as surely as they knew the shape of her mouth, that she had never shown—but had counted off the days as if she knew the hour when she would pass. Maybe she had. Maybe she'd known all along. The war to unite the continent, the need to build a new legacy for her empire, the speed at which she abandoned the throne, and how fiercely she had embraced the challenge of adjusting to a new life: all of these things had been in preparation for this moment. To use the time she had. Time she refused, repeatedly, to take back.

"It shouldn't be like this," they said. They no longer tried to hold back anything; the tears were going to come anyway.

As she so often did in moments like this one, she stroked the side of their face, gazing at them with the intensity that most people would save for something completely new. The look of enchantment there, the focus that bordered on awe, had not changed in the years they'd known each other. It was such a... such a _loving_ expression, and something in that felt obscene, something in that hurt so badly that it was like a hand squeezing inside of their chest.

"We changed the world together," Edelgard said. They had to be quiet, to _listen_, to hear her. "You helped me to do so much. We... maybe we didn't fix things, but we _changed_ them, didn't we? We made them better."

"Yes," Byleth said. "Things are better. Everything is better."

"All of that—I broke so many things. So many people. I laid waste to nations. I held the world by the throat. And then... and then I got to leave. With you. And be here. With _you_." She smiled again. "A few years is such a kind bargain, in exchange for all of that. I feel I've cheated the gods."

They had no answer for her. They couldn't say anything.

She lowered her head to their shoulder again. "It's getting hard to see... and hear. And to speak. Here. Lean down."

They did.

She put her lips to their ear. Spoke eight words.

That spent her strength, for a moment, and she rested again. They held her, as if holding onto her could stop what she'd been walking toward her entire life.

"Let me listen to you," she said.

Gently they cradled her head, guiding her down to press one ear against their chest, to hear the rhythm counting out moments. She sighed, the happiest sound that she'd ever made.

"This is my favorite sound," Edelgard began.

"It only beats for you," Byleth finished.

They stayed like that for a long time. Byleth hoped, in the part of their mind that could still hope, that she had fallen asleep. They shifted her, so gently, and laid their ear against her back. Listened. Listened.

Raised their head.

Lifted Edelgard into their arms. Pulled her tightly against them. Rocked back and forth. Breathed. Breathed, because it was all they could do.

A long time passed. An eternity. More.

Then there was a sound—the pulsing of an enormous heart.

The world slipped away into darkness.

Byleth remembered.

* * *

"Back again," the girl's voice said. Of course, she was here. She was always here, outside of time, regardless of what happened in the physical world. "You have... ah."

Byleth shuddered in the dark, hiding their face behind their hands. The universe spun around them, spun out into nothing. None of it mattered.

Sothis's hand rested on their shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said. "It sounds like this time was... difficult."

Byleth did not answer. They were trying to hold onto the feel of El in their arms. What she'd sounded like when she laughed. The smell of the spot where her neck met her shoulder, where she was so sensitive to touch. More than remember, they were trying to live their memories. To be their memories.

"Child," Sothis said, and it was the tone of a mother who saw their child hurting but knew they had to intervene anyway.

"I only need a moment," Byleth said. "Just... just a moment."

The progenitor god sighed, part exasperation and part genuine, empathetic grief. "It's never just a moment for the wounds in our hearts. You know how time works here. After all these cycles, you _have_ to know. A moment turns into a lifetime turns into an eternity. Is this the time? Is this when you'll lose yourself?"

Byleth's head snapped up, and through the tears they glared at the god. The two of them had been forced together, but both understood the other more intimately than they understood themselves. "I will _never_ lose myself. I will... I will keep trying. There is no fate."

Sothis scowled. "This again?"

"I have to believe in that. I have to reject the notion that we are doomed."

The scowl shifted as Sothis knit her brow, becoming something contemplative and strange. "I suppose you must, at that. Do you know how many times you've done this?"

"No." No point hiding that.

"How interesting. Would you believe I've lost count, too? Me, the progenitor god who presides over the turning of the hands of time, and I've _lost count. _What a singularly stubborn creature you are." The expression shifted into a smile. "Ah, good. You are angry. Better angry than grieving, I suppose."

"I am allowed my grief."

"Certainly, but never for very long. By your own will you discard your pain, and your love, and your memories, and _my_ memories which I'm less thrilled about, over and over and over. You've come to them in the shape of men and women, you have stood on every side of this war, and you've loved _all_ of them—each of them, one by one, and many more than once. You seem to be trying every possible course of action until you find the right one."

Byleth straightened in the dark, crossing their arms, waiting for the god to finish.

"Tell me something. Will you keep going until you can save _all_ of them? You've gotten quite proficient at saving Claude, you know. He makes it out almost every time, now. But in all your attempts, all the lives you've spent trying, you still can't bridge the gaps between their hearts. You cannot restore their broken bonds. Is that not fate? Is that not unchangeable?"

"I will cut my own path."

Nothing. No more than that. To make an argument was to brook an argument, and they could not bear that now.

Sothis shook her head, but she was still smiling.

"All right. All right. Once more, I suppose. Shall we begin, now?"

Byleth grimaced, remembered what they'd just done, what they'd just been through, what they'd just lost.

_I will see her again, but I won't know her. All these years we spent together. _

_I may never get them back. _

_I can't lose them._

_I have to let them go_.

"Yes," they said. They'd really only needed a moment.

Sothis moved her hands, and the universe shifted. The progenitor god sketched out the arc of time, and with mighty arms did she shift the world to match her design.

Byleth tumbled backward into the dark, disappearing into an abyss. Their life slipped away from them as they sank into dream.

Desperately, with the strength and fervor of someone who has nothing else to love, they clung to one memory, one moment.

Lips pressed against their ear. The smell of her hair. The warmth of her hand on their shoulder. The words she spoke.

"I never stopped learning from you, my teacher."

They held on.

The dark swallowed them.

They dreamed of a war waged long ago.


End file.
